I Voted

by Carla Hagen on November 13, 2012

…and I did not have to show a special electoral photo ID. Or take a test. Or pay a poll tax. Or jump any of the other hurdles set before people over the years so they couldn’t vote. Of course I wasn’t posing as anyone—the bogeyman scenario evoked by people backing the voter restriction amendment to the Minnesota Constitution. Which in fact would be a very inefficient form of voter fraud. If you really want to throw an election, you need masses, truckloads of people who go from from poll to poll, as they used to in Mexico. Where voter fraud was so widespread and brazen that the citizens needed, demanded and got a universal voting ID. But we don’t have those problems in Minnesota, so of course I voted no.

And likewise voted joyfully no! On the hateful amendment to enshrine prohibition of love in our constitution. As not so long ago, laws forbade miscegenation, that ugly word for love between two people whose skin does not match.

I stayed awake until our re-elected President had given his acceptance speech and woke up to the radio announcer saying the two amendments had vanished in the night.

I voted. Happily, pressing down hard with my felt tipped pen (which afterwards I donated because they were already running short at 7:30 in the morning) so there would be no mistake, voted even for those who ran unopposed, voted because there is nothing so freeing, so powerful, so dangerous.